Guest essay by David Archibald
The Maunder Minimum was not completely devoid of sunspots, as shown by the following graphic using data from SIDC. Will global warming be attenuated due to our current low solar activity?
In a comment on a previous post, a Mr B. Fagan notes that the authors of the solar physics paper quoted say “As a consequence, the increase of global warming will be slightly attenuated until 2100 A.D. However, the subsequent increase in solar activity will further enhance the global warming.”
He plaintively asks why the conclusion that global warming will overwhelm whatever the Sun might do is ignored.
Well, the reason it is ignored is because all solar physics papers that touch on climate have the same sort of wording, for exactly the same reason. For example, here’s a Usoskin et al. paper in which at the end of the abstract they say “Although the rarity of the current episode of high average sunspot numbers may indicate that the Sun has contributed to the unusual climate change during the twentieth century, we point out that solar variability is unlikely to have been the dominant cause of the strong warming during the past three decades.” It is like reading Pravda in Soviet times. You ignore the Party line and read between the lines.
The price of getting published in solar physics is abjuring any role for the Sun in climate. Solar physicists will start giving that up over the next couple of years with the sharp step down in temperature that is underway because otherwise they will run reputational risk for ignoring the obvious. In the meantime they stoically bear the humiliation of having to utter these inanities.
What if you are a normal climate scientist, doing the usual modelling and so on, and you want to get the message out about the effects of the cold climate coming? Well, that requires some mental gymnastics. But it has been done. Professor John Kutzbach of the University of Wisconsin shows how. In the CIA climate report of 1974 predicting severe cooling and a return to the climate of the neo-arboreal era (1600-1850), he is mentioned on page 24. Forty years later, Professor Kutzbach is still at the University of Wisconsin and still warning of cooling. In 2010, he was the co-author of a paper which investigated the effect of a 3.1°C temperature decline on plant productivity. The basis of the 3.1°C assumption was the low carbon dioxide levels of the glacial periods.
Saying the magic words “The Sun can’t have caused the warming” is enough to get most solar physicists published. Others have to recant in public if their findings proved to be inconvenient. For example, in 2011 Dr Richard Altrock published a paper in which he said that, based on observations of the green coronal emissions of the Sun, Solar Cycle 24 was 40% slower than the average of the previous two cycles. This would have a significant effect on climate through Friis-Christensen and Lassen theory. That was followed in 2012 by a paper in which he said that some data had been overlooked in the 2011 paper and that Solar Cycle 24 was back to normal. He hasn’t published his diagram again since.
As far as I can tell, the first solar physicists to suggest that we are heading into a Maunder Minimum were Schatten and Tobiska in 2003. From their abstract,” The surprising result of these long-range predictions is a rapid decline in solar activity, starting with cycle #24. If this trend continues, we may see the Sun heading towards a “Maunder” type of solar activity minimum – an extensive period of reduced levels of solar activity.”
Others on their own efforts have subsequently attempted to untangle the solar record and derive a prediction from it. Thus Steinhilber and Beer, and from the tree rings, Libby and Pandolfi and the Finnish foresters. All are pointing down, steeply down from now. By the time of the CIA climate report in 1974, there was still a living memory of the colder years of the early 20th century, and an appreciation that humanity was in a special time of warmth and abundance. Now forty years on, the cold years that preceded the current warmth are not even a distant memory. Most think that this is the new normal.
Dikpati and Hathaway, both of NASA, in 2006 had predictions of Solar Cycle 24 amplitude of 190 and 170 respectively. In their press release, NASA said that,”Dikpati’s prediction is unprecedented.” It was also terribly wrong, possibly unprecedentedly so. Significantly, no solar physicist is now predicting a return to the high levels of activity of the second half of the 20th century. Schatten and Tobiska’s prediction of a Maunder level of activity stands, is on track, and has no competition. Everyone is well advised to plan accordingly.
David Archibald, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., is the author of Twilight of Abundance (Regnery, 2014).
Ed, thanks. I know several authors have directed our attention to these events during the LIA. Their theories as to the commenced cooling generally turns to either a direct effect (Sun’s rays deflected thus creating instant cooling), or an indirect affect related to overturning circulation halt due to a fresh versus salt water issue. I don’t think either proposed mechanism has the strength to sustain itself for as long as it did. Bob Tisdale’s explanation of the El Nino/La Nina discharge/recharge funtion of ENSO processes offers both short and long term consequences of circulating less-warmed water due to atmospheric ash pulling a blind down over the equatorial band of ocean so important in the recharge process. Your link certainly demonstrates active tropical volcanoes. The geographic location and sheer size, activity, and number of volcanoes in the Indonesian area provide a tantalizing clue when combined with trade wind and wind burst mechanisms that could keep all this exploded, burped and belched ash in the equatorial atmosphere. Did it eventually get rained out? Probably. Did it ride the wind currents to other part of the Earth? Yes. And that would have been the end of it but I wonder if these volcanoes kept pumping more into the atmosphere to replace the initial load. They often do.
I am also thinking that some enterprising volcanologist could estimate the amount of ash this massive collection of volcanoes could spew into the air if a few of them were active during this time span.
Funny thing about that overturning process. Global warming has been targeted at one time or another to cause a slow down in that process. So too it seems global cooling. Which is it? Who cares. Under a scenario of less warm surface waters due to lack of recharge, this less warm surface water should sink just fine, since colder water sinks easier than warmer water. Remember, the Pacific sends used surface water into the Atlantic and the Atlantic sends us nutrient rich deep water into the Pacific. That overturning process is caused by topographical barriers at the two entrances into the Arctic basin. In the North Atlantic surface waters sink, and in the Northern Pacific deep water rises up. The circulation continues through the Indian Ocean – the connection between the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean. The surface part of this conveyor belt would be severely affected by an ash blind pulled down across the equatorial Pacific.
In summary, I don’t think the overturning circulation in the North Atlantic was affected during the LIA. If anything, less warmed water from lack of recharge and then circulated into the Atlantic would sink easily causing bottom water to be shoved aside and pushed up just fine. And I don’t think the degree of saltiness would have much of an affect due to the rather choppy North Atlantic. Any ice melt (bergs have less salt in them) would be mixed pretty well with salty water, and the colder water would readily sink. If the whole damned thing were to be cooled by lack of equatorial recharge from a drastic reduction in solar insolation, we have the makings of a very cold world. And attempts to rebuild that store of oceanic heat would take a very long time if volcanoes continued to reduce solar insolation along the equatorial belt.
Stephen, any decrease in insolation will have an affect. But I am focused on the Maunder Minimum and the Little Ice Age, proposing a driver that has shown to be present throughout the 600-700 year period. And the affect was drastic, whatever the cause! Your conjecture and its source would not have that kind of power. Besides, the Sun went [quiet] AFTER the Little Ice Age began.
Pamela many disagree with many of the points you keep trying to make. None of them hold water!
Ted, why do they not hold water? Critique please. Leave the drive bys to the warmists.
Thanks to P Gray.
Yes, passionate speculation. I love it.
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Electro Magnetic connection beteen the sun and the earth from Piers Corbyn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R26PXRrgds#t=565
I have only one issue with the Maunder minimum: As I have come to understand the correlation between (low) sunspot activity and the Maunder minimum is based on the observations of Galileo and some contemporaries using the first telescopes ever available. Apart from the fact that one is not advised to look at the sun directly through a telescope if one wants to keep his eyesight I wonder about one thing: Wasn’t it also Galileo who spotted the canals on Mars? Haven’t others then after his publication of that “fact” “seen” them too? Regardless of whether or not the sun is responsible for the climate and whether sun spots have to do with it – how can we be sure that during the Maunder minimum there were less sun spots than “usual” if it is based (only) on Galileo’s observations if these were of the same “quality” as his Martian reports? Or are there other sources that indubitably can prove that in the 1600s there were fewer sun spots than normally?